Current Testing Practices in Industries

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The development and use of tests in industry are widespread at the present time, and they promise to continue on an increasingly broad scale.

Extensiveness of Testing:

To list all the companies in the United States that use psychological tests would be a lengthy and impossible task—impossible because published test results of studies are often described without mention of the specific companies involved. Moreover, the companies that pay for research sometimes regard the material as “top secret” or as their private property, and so their policy is to discourage reports in the liter­ature.

Such a policy often gives a company an advantage over its competitors, and from this point of view the policy is wise. But at the same time it constitutes an obstacle in the development and use of tests. An incomplete list of the companies which have used psychological testing can be made, however, and in some respects may be said to comprise an industrial Who’s Who.

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This list has not been organ­ized on the basis of either the type of company or the type of test problem because it was believed that a random order would best illustrate the wide and varied use of the tests. A random list of some of the companies and the tests used is as follows. The Johnson & Johnson Company, well-known manufacturers of surgical bandages, have used tests to select foremen and clerical workers.

The Vega Airplane Company and the Curtiss Wright Corporation use tests in their selection process. R. G. Le Tourneau, Inc., has developed a battery of tests to measure the primary mental abilities needed for job success with them. The Sun Oil Company has been in­terested in developing a battery which would be suitable for selecting people who could be trained to operate machine tools.

The Lockheed Aircraft Corporation has had successful experience with personality, intelligence, and mechanical aptitude tests in the selection of many different types of employees. The Hawaiian Sugar Refining Corporation has found the use of tests for the promotion of employees successful. Aptitude tests as well as intelligence tests have been used by the A. C. Spark Plug Division of General Motors, the Woodward Governor Company, and Martin and Schwartz, Inc.

The Harwood Manufacturing Company and the Kaiser Glove Com­pany are two firms in the needle trades which have hired operators with the aid of tests. The American Aluminium Company selected a group of prospective foremen for training on the basis of psychological test scores. Apprentice toolmakers are hired by the Scovill Manufacturing Company with the aid of tests.

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The Milwaukee Electric Railway and Light Company uses a battery of many tests to select a category of employees known as “electrical trouble men.” The Philadelphia Electric Com­pany has found tests helpful in the selection of substation operators. Westinghouse Electric Company uses tests as part of its promotion program for clerical workers.

The Atlantic Refining Company selects men for responsible positions, such as accountants and statisticians, with the aid of tests. Most of the insurance companies -among them Liberty National Life Insurance Company, Aetna Life Insurance Company, and Metropolitan Life Insurance Company—have found test batteries helpful in selecting agents.

The Harris Trust and Savings Bank of Chicago uses both personality and intelli­gence tests in its selection process. Considerable research has been done by the Kimberly-Clark Corporation; this concern has developed its own tests, such as the Kimberly-Clark packing and inspection test, which have been made available to the profession.

W. T. Grant hires clerical workers on the basis of tests. The Tremco Manufactur­ing Company has done much research on the selection of salesmen. R. H. Macy has used psychological tests for years in hiring employees for many of its depart­ments Procter & Gamble has found tests useful in selecting salesmen and sales managers. Aptitude tests have proved valuable to the Todd Company in hiring salesmen.

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It is very difficult to obtain any really accurate set of figures indicating, in per­centage terms, the frequency with which tests are employed in industry. One major difficulty is that many firms may use tests only occasionally for specific openings which occur at infrequent intervals.

Other firms may rely on some state or govern­ment agency such as the State Employment Service to do most of their testing and preliminary screening for them. Thus, one must really differentiate between formal and informal testing programs before attempting to determine the frequency with which industrial firms are using tests as a method of screening job applicants

One such survey was carried out in 1959 by the Industrial Relations News, a trade magazine (1959). They surveyed 200 companies to see what percent used formal ‘testing programs for job applicants. Sixty-five percent reported having such a pro­gram. Of those with a testing program, all agreed that their programs were highly useful and that they fully intended to continue them. When the non-test users were queried, 60 percent felt that testing could be useful, 2 percent felt testing was of little value, and 38 percent had no opinion. Thus, of the total sample only about 14 percent were not of the opinion that testing was of considerable value in an in­dustrial setting.

Sources of Information about Tests:

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A major difficulty often encountered by a person wanting to install a testing pro­gram is where to find information about various kinds of tests—particularly informa­tion related to test use in industrial settings. There are a number of excellent sources for such information, and anyone who is apt to become involved in a testing pro­gram should be aware of-these references.

Probably the best single source of test information is a series of Mental Measure­ment Yearbooks edited by Oscar K. Euros. Published periodically, Euros’ books represent a continuing attempt to keep reference material related to tests as up to date as possible. They are a very complete source because they embody a critical survey of tests.

They are not limited to industrial tests but include practically all work which has been done in the entire testing field. In each volume a group of contributors carefully selected by Euros reviews all the available material on practically all the psychological tests. For example, Euros’ Sixth Mental Measurements Yearbook (1965) presents information on 1219 different tests and includes 795 original critical reviews.

Several extremely useful general textbooks are available which cover the general ‘ topic of psychological testing. These include Anastasi’s Psychological Testing (1961) Cronbach’s Essentials of Psychological Testing (1949), and Guion’s Personnel Test­ing (1965). While they are not devoted exclusively to tests in industry, they pre-set information on many of the tests currently being used in industry. In addition, they provide a great deal of general information on testing which is quite useful to a person involved in any sort of testing process.

A third source of readily available test information is provided by test publishers. While there are a large number of such sources, many of whom are quite small and who publish only one or two tests, the large test publishers have catalogues which often are a convenient starting place for someone interested in establishing a test program.

The psychology journal Personnel Psychology has a section devoted exclusively to the exchange of information concerning industrial applications of various tests. It is called the Validity Information Exchange (VIE). Its purpose is to stimulate the publication of validity information in industry and to stimulate the use of such information in guiding personnel actions.

Every validity study is organized in the following succinct format for easy evaluation by the reader:

1. Firm:

The sponsor for the study and the organization or firm within which the study was done (if not proprietary information).

2. Problem and setting:

The problem to which the study was addressed is described, and the social, economic, organizational, and related elements in the setting for the study may be outlined.

3. Job title and code:

A job title and job code are given. The title and code describe the job performed by the people who were studied. The code is taken from the United States Em­ployment Service’s Dictionary of Occupational Titles (Third Edition), Volumes I and II, U.S. Government Printing Office, 1965, or from supplements and new editions as they may become available.

4. Job description:

A description supplementing the job description given in the Dictionary of Occupational Titles is given when necessary.

5. Criteria:

The means by which job performance was observed, recorded, evaluated, and quantified are described.

6. Sample:

The kind of people studied are described, such as by sex, age, educational level, job service, and marital status.

7. Number of cases:

The number of people in the sample, the number of people in subsamples, and the uses of subsamples in the study are described.

8. Predictors:

The kinds of data being investigated for their usefulness in guiding personnel actions are described. When tests are used as predictors they may be described by title and a reference number, such as “Miller Analogies Test (6:472).” This example refers to a description of the Miller Analogies Test found in review number 472 in Euros’ Sixth Mental Measurements Yearbook.

9. Technique and results:

The methods used in evaluating the data are described and the results are summarized in statistical form. Jones (1950) reviewed over 2100 references on employee selection and selected 427 studies as representing the “cream of the crop.” The ten classifications of workers most frequently studied were: salesmen (75), clerical workers (60), teachers (49), assemblers (23), executives (23), inspectors (23), supervisors (21), typists (17), stenographers (14), and machinists (9). However, the important point of the article is that Jones found only eight reported studies which met the criteria of adequacy in both experimental design and report.

So that the more serious student may refer to these studies, they are here listed:

Selover, R. B. The development and validation of a battery of tests for the selection of clerical workers. American Psychologist, 1948, 3, 291-292 (abstract) and personal communication.

Jones concluded by listing five requirements of a research report on employee selection using psychological tests:

1. Detailed job description, with each group treated separately.

2. Complete description of the sample: N (sufficiently large); what proportion of the total population this represents and how selected; factors involved in hiring such as age, length of time on the job (preferably with widely differing employees treated as separate groups), and total experience in jobs of similar nature; and use of two samples, with one an ap­plicant group.

3. Exact test titles; period in the employment experience when the tests were administered; whether the tests were a factor in hiring; where the tests were given; under what conditions and incentives the tests were given; reliabilities of tests with comparable groups.

4. Detailed description of the criterion; length of time on the job when the criterion measure was applied (with widely differing employees treated as separate groups); reliability of the criterion; some discussion of the validity of the criterion selected; if ratings were used, some estimate of the amount of contact the rater had with the employee; if production records were used, the duration of the period and whether there were any unusual factors operating at that time.

5. Adequate statistical treatment, with assurance that the assumptions governing the use of the given measures were met, and an actual report of the numerical results together with an appropriate measure of significance.

Dorcus and Jones (1950) have published a volume of abstracts which is essen­tially the record of the 427 “cream of the crop” studies referred to in Jones’s study. It includes over 200 occupations listed alphabetically from accountant to YMCA secretary, and reports such items as subjects, tests used, criterion, validity of results of the study, and reliability in the criterion.

A sample abstract follows:

Surgent, L. V.: The use of aptitude tests in the selection of radio tube mounters. Psychological Monographs, 1947, 61 (283), p. 40.

1. Subjects:

233 radio tube mounters, female. Tests used as part of application pro­cedure but results not used in selection.

2. Tests:

(1) Minnesota Rate of Manipulation Test: Placing,

(2) Minnesota Rate of Manipulation Test: Turning,

(3) O’Connor Finger Dexterity Test,

(4) Purdue Pegboard,

(5) O’Connor Tweezer Dexterity test.

3. Criterion:

A single over-all rating based on the pooled judgment of the supervisor of training and 2 instructors; 5-point scale; rating during training period.

4. Validity:

Biserial correlation between test scores and criterion (groups divided into satisfactory and unsatisfactory):

Multiple correlation of test scores and criterion (optimum order of test addition):

Follow-up of 35 of the 233 mounters : prediction of criterion scores on basis of a re­gression equation correlated with over-all rating by immediate supervisor on the job:

Two-test equation, involving Tests 4 and 5: .60

Three-test equation, involving Tests 4, 5, and 1: .43

5. Reliability:

Rank-order inter-correlations (N = 51) of 2 over-all fitness rankings of quality and quantity of work produced in training (latter 2 one week after first):

Note the similarity between the format used by Dorcus and Jones in their Hand­book and that currently used by the VIE. In summary, the preceding sources of test information provide an excellent introduction and information base relating to test data, standardization, and research.